The Geography Blog focusing on all things geography: human, physical, technical, space, news, and geopolitics. Also known as Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze!
Written by a former National Geographic employee who also proudly served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Expanding Earth Theory

Before Continental Drift was the accepted theory on the formations of the Earth's surface another theory had some following. Expanding Earth theory's reasoning comes from continents matching up like puzzle pieces (same as Continental Drift). But instead of continents floating around on plates Expanding Earth claims the Earth has been growing since the era of the dinosaurs. Ways of growth are "explained" by phase change of the Earth's materials or gravity fluxes (which allowed dinosaurs to be so big).

Ask most geomorphologists about Expanding Earth and the answer received will be "no." But there are still holdouts like the video above.

8 comments:

The important point near the end of the video is that, if this theory is true, it would change everything.

And indeed, it may be true. But there is real value in keeping background assumptions the same: you can have long periods of normal scientific work where theories are made ever more precise and accurate. If you change the assumptions too many times, you get a lot of rhetoric and scientific revolutions, but little actual progress.

I thought this theory fascinating. Someone in my household (whom you know) keeps telling me the ocean floor continually is 'melting' and that is why the ocean floor isn't that old. What do you think? From South Dakota

The common geology also got a quite good explanation about why the ocean floor is that young (there is nothing new about that facts). Geologists claim the ocean floor constantly renews itself, there is a lot of proof for this theory.

It is tempting to believe in such a cool theory, but that raises a lot of questions. Biologists claim live started in the ocean, that is quite hard with a earth that only has some small seas.

As with global warming, people today readily embrace hair-brained ideas. ("If you don't believe in God, you will believe in anything." I think Chesterton said that or something like it.) Obviously President Bush has something to do with repressing the truth of the matter.

The reason the continents fit together was because they were originally one land mass! And fish fossils are much older than 10 million years old. Fishes occur at the end of the Cambrian break, at the beginning of the Ordovician period, ca.500 million years ago.

Still, it was fun to watch and to be impressed anew how much nuttiness is out there.

This post has many flaws. Fundamentally, continental drift is not the accepted theory on the formation of earth's surface. Plate Tectonics is the generally agreed upon theory that describes formation of continents, growth of new crust, earthquakes, the formation of mountain ranges, etc. etc. It agrees with continental drift in that continental crust have moved over the history of the earth, but continental drift provided no mechanism that would drive continental movement, among other flaws. The Expanding Earth theory was a theory that recieved some attention in the mid 20th century, but was quickly replaced by Plate Tectonics as new evidence was discovered.

The expanding earth theory has many flaws. Although the mechanism of expansion is often cited as a change in the gravitational constant, there is no evidence of this occurring in modern times and no proposed reasoning behind this change. In addition, expanding earth often cites the creation of new ocean crust at mid-ocean ridges as part of the driving force of expansion. This ignores the existence of subduction zones where oceanic crust is forced beneath a continental plate and is subsequently melted and returned to the mantle.

Any amount of research into the subject that is not conducted on youtube will reveal that expanding earth is an extremely flawed concept.